Charles Spencer says Buckingham Palace is trying to discredit his memory of what happened after Diana died.
Nearly three decades after Princess Diana’s death, her brother and her former husband are now fighting publicly over who remembers the aftermath correctly.
Charles Spencer, Diana’s younger brother, has accused King Charles III of “gaslighting” him after Buckingham Palace pushed back on claims in Spencer’s forthcoming memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister. The book contains a series of allegations about the days after Diana died in 1997, including Spencer’s account of a bitter phone call with the man who was then Prince Charles.
According to Spencer, Charles made an extraordinarily harsh remark about Diana during that conversation. The palace disputes the account and has suggested that memories formed in the middle of intense grief can be unreliable. Spencer’s response was essentially: absolutely not.
He told People that he clearly remembers what happened and accused the King of trying to make him question his own memory. That is where the word “gaslighting” entered a royal story that was already not short on emotional explosives.
The memoir is due out September 22, but selected claims have been circulating in advance and have reopened some of the most sensitive arguments surrounding Diana’s death, funeral and relationship with the royal family.
One of the central disputes involves the funeral procession. Spencer has long said he objected to the idea of young Princes William and Harry walking behind their mother’s coffin. They were 15 and 12. The image of the two boys walking through London became one of the defining images of Diana’s funeral and remains controversial decades later.
In his new account, Spencer says he argued with Charles over that decision and over the treatment of Diana after her death. He portrays the conversation as angry and deeply hostile. Buckingham Palace’s response, according to reporting in People and The Times, has been to challenge the reliability of Spencer’s recollection without engaging every allegation line by line.
That is a very royal way to fight. One side writes a book. The other side raises an eyebrow through palace channels and invokes the complicated nature of grief.
Spencer, however, is not interested in leaving it there.
He says he discussed the conversation with others at the time and insists his account is not a memory that suddenly appeared 29 years later. He has also rejected suggestions that he is exploiting Diana for money or publicity, describing the memoir as an effort to correct myths and preserve what he believes is the truth about his sister.
Allies of King Charles see it very differently.
The Times reported criticism from royal circles accusing Spencer of trading on Diana’s privacy while condemning others for doing the same thing. That criticism goes directly at one of the central tensions surrounding nearly every new Diana revelation: at what point does defending her memory become another form of exposing it?
Spencer’s book reportedly contains claims far beyond the funeral dispute. People reported that he describes Charles as behaving in ways Spencer found shocking in the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death. The palace rejects the characterization. Prince William has not publicly entered the fight and, according to The Times, appears to be following the old royal strategy of refusing to respond directly.
That silence may be deliberate because nearly everyone involved is carrying some combination of grief, family loyalty, institutional responsibility and decades-old resentment. There is no neutral family group chat capable of resolving this one.
Spencer’s intervention also lands at a moment when Diana’s legacy remains entangled with current royal tensions. Prince Harry has repeatedly connected his own battles with the British press and royal institution to what happened to his mother. Spencer, appearing publicly to promote the memoir, has also compared the media treatment of Harry and Meghan to the scrutiny Diana endured.
He says he tries to remain supportive of both William and Harry despite their estrangement. That is a difficult position when your new book is simultaneously reopening a fight with their father about the most traumatic event of their childhood.
For King Charles, the allegation is uniquely personal. It is not a dispute over policy, money or royal protocol. It is about what he allegedly said and did in the days after his ex-wife died. There is no document that can neatly settle tone, intent or every word of a private 1997 phone call.
That means the feud may be impossible to resolve in the way modern audiences expect. There may never be a definitive recording. The palace may continue to deny the account. Spencer may continue to insist that his memory is precise. People who already have strong views about Diana and Charles will probably interpret the dispute through those views.
The book will still sell.
And that may be the most predictable part of this entire royal cycle. Diana remains one of the most intensely examined public figures of the modern era, and any new firsthand account from her brother is almost guaranteed to reopen old arguments. The difference this time is that Spencer is not merely recounting history. He is directly accusing the reigning King of trying to discredit his recollection of it.
The palace’s line is that grief can distort memory. Spencer’s line is that the palace is distorting his memory now.
Twenty-nine years later, who owns the truth of a private family tragedy when the family itself remembers it differently — and the entire world has been watching ever since?
